My Language Challenges – Part 4

                So these were my methods, for philosophy and economic class, to wisely/blindly select important material, and then translate them, learn them, and write them into the exams. In there I had to face so many challenges, my language challenges (learning grammar, speaking, listening (hardest part), writing … ), my university challenges, my cultural challenges and … I understood that I have to first focus on my classes, and with this situation I can’t focus on learning Spanish or ..  so I decided that I will improve my Spanish by communicating in the class and society, and put my other energy on the courses that I have.

                There were so many funny and good experiences too, I was the only Iranian over there (in the country there were so many tourists, and European residents, but very very very few Iranians, which I have never seen or heard of ), and the cultural difference was a lot, everything I knew was different over there, it was so much fun too, the regatton, dancing and even the religious people, I was from another world, and they were friendly people, so I learned about all of them. One of the funny experiences was that I went to a friends house, the name of their dog was Pito, and I called him puto several times, then they told me his name is Pito, and puto means bitch .. or once in my English/Spanish pattern making I had a guest, and wanted to say do you want some eggs, but I didn’t know how, so I just said you want some egggos ? And then it became a famous story between us.

                Rather than these, my calculus class, as I knew I got an A without any studying (I have passed the last engineering  math in Iran, before I got out),  so that was fun, and with the translator method, I got 80 in philosophy, and 85 in economy, but the Spanish was even harder than these, for that class I read the book and everything, but where you put the stress in Spanish was the hardest one, which I never learned it that well, even the natives who knew were to put stress on words, they were confused in that section, I don’t know how, but I got 72 on my final, I remember that grade was an average grade in that class, and better than some natives, and with all these being said, my GPA in the first semester was close to 85, and it surprised so many people, even my friends and others who thought that I will definitely fail in those classes. I remember a lady named Stacy (make up name, don’t remember her name) she was making fun of it and saying, the first day you came here you could not even say hola (hello), how could you pass those classes ?! yes after 2 years being there, I passed 62 units and learned reading, writing, speaking and listening in Spanish.